There is a lot about Gremlin as regards its birth, styling, and performance. Having to battle the influx of imported cars into America’s shores, AMC had no choice but to come up with a small car that was light, efficient, easy to park, and notably of better quality. AMC design chief Dick Teague made his first sketch of the car on the back of a Northwest Orient Airlines barf bag. The Gremlin AMC car was the smallest of what was then called the Big Four, and with limited resources, the project was archived. This project brought in the subcompact segment to Americans as they used to their specialized compact cars.
Teague, AMC design chief had this to say about his little creation in an interview with MotorTrend in 1970 “I don’t think the Gremlin’s going to win any styling awards, but at least the car has personality and character and it has a different-looking little image. It isn’t just another little funny-looking sedan. It’s a cute little wagon that looks like it’ll do the job that we intend for it to do.”
AMC Gremlin Design
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The Gremlin is a subcompact car although it was made from mechanical bits intended for larger vehicles. There was little opportunity to shrink the front end, as GM had done with the Chevy Vega and Ford with the Pinto so AMC simply lopped off the back end.
AMC capitalized on the build quality issue of other domestic manufacturers by keeping the body shell stiff and also decided not to fit a hatchback or a trunk lid. Instead, what little cargo space the Gremlin had was accessed by lifting the rear window on four-seat Gremlins, that is. On two-seat “commuter” Gremlins, the rear window was fixed in place.
The Gremlin’s design details included existing cam-in-block straight-six engines and a live rear axle suspended by leaf springs. By comparison, General Motors was pouring money into the new Chevrolet Vega, developing not only a new four-cylinder engine and coil-spring rear suspension but new technologies for rustproofing and transportation. To keep the price down, AMC fitted the Gremlin with four-wheel drum brakes and a three-speed transmission that lacked a synchronizer for first gear. Even the back seat was optional.
The Engine
The Hornet’s hand-me-downs were handed down to the Gremlin: Cam-in-block straight-six engines, four-wheel drum brakes, and a three-speed manual transmission that lacked a synchronized first gear. The compacted rear suspension was one place where innovation might have been called for, but AMC simply shortened the Hornet’s longitudinal leaf springs, making the Gremlin’s back end prone to skipping sideways while cornering.
What made the Gremlin so Peculiar
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The Gremlin was the first modern American car whose size was compared to the Beetle, being within a couple of inches of the VW in length and wheelbase. (For comparison, the Ford Maverick was nearly two feet long.) It was several inches wider, which made it feel like a bigger car because from the A-pillar forward, it was a bigger car. Of course, it weighed more than the VW by 760 pounds, nearly half again as much, but it was a hell of a lot quicker, nearly as fuel-efficient, and its American-size 21-gallon gas tank took it significantly farther on fill-ups. It even had a tighter turning circle than the Beetle.
AMC ensured that the cheapest 1970 Gremlin, with the smaller of two sixes, a three-speed column-shift manual, no back seat, and no hatch lid, listed for $1,879, right in the same neighborhood as the Volkswagen. To put that in perspective, the 1970 Chevrolet Nova started at $2,335, and the Vega would debut in September with a $2,090 price tag. Buyers took an immediate liking to the Gremlin. It was more powerful than the Beetle and other imports and felt like a more substantial car.
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